Customer Satisfaction
What is Customer Satisfaction?
Along with many researchers in this area, we think that it is no longer sufficient just to satisfy a customer – the level of competitiveness in today's markets demands an approach that perhaps goes even further. We like this definition best:
"Satisfaction is an affective state or feeling reaction in which the consumer's needs, desires and expectations during the course of the service experience have been met or exceeded"
Adapted from Lovelock et al, Services Marketing 2001
Why do we think it is so important?
We would be provocative here in stating that customer satisfaction may be one of an organisation's strongest forward indicators of performance. As market competition intensifies, consumers are encouraged to develop higher expectations and naturally become more assertive – this scenario is one of constant change. No business can afford to ignore change, in particular when customer expectations are involved. In fact, some companies like Cisco will categorically state that once a product or service is no longer regarded as being of value by their customers, it ceases.
Let's look at another view of why we might want to understand customer satisfaction and talk more about expectations & loyalty. A typical range of contacts between customer and supplier may result in emotions ranging from disappointment to indifference to outright delight – all as part of normal transactions! But in situations when service falters and recovery efforts commence, customers immediately alter their expectations and suddenly view every service with heightened sensitivity, attention and critical appraisal – the yardstick suddenly moves up (and up).
In this same competitive market, we all preach the same mantra of retaining our customers with the quality of our performance and services. Yet how many companies can measure their customer attrition rate? Some. How many can predict their attrition rate? Fewer. How many can confidently identify their primary attrition factors? (before attrition actually occurs) A successful few!
Where business confidently but blindly push on with the way we always do it, client bases can shift dramatically. We describe the steady stream of exiting, disenchanted customers as “the silent exodus”. A small number send up a signal that they would like to carry on the relationship, that they think the company can actually improve and that they think it worth the effort to communicate with you. We usually unjustly describe these signals as “complaints” when we receive them this in this post-service failure manner.
But we've only given a pessimistic view of satisfaction so far. Can the output of measuring customer satisfaction be applied in business management? Easy. Most research and analysis into how a business is performing can identify a number of improvement areas required. The problem most management teams then face is prioritising their attention and resources across a range of “fixes”.
UltraFeedback has spent considerable effort developing and refining an interactive reporting methodology that enables some practical managerial judgements to be made on which customer-measured issues have the most impact on satisfaction; which issues therefore have the highest priority to improve satisfaction ratings and importantly, where are the “softer” issues that will not appreciably impact on satisfaction ratings – often time and resource-intensive “black holes” of activity.
Why do we do it well?
We have developed our research services based on a combination of strong research logic, thorough research design and an active application of our own unique technology in managing and communicating research. We manage our client relationships actively with direct and consistent support from our select and specialised team – we do not wheel out a principal for honeymoon meetings and substitute juniors for the real work.
When we start working with clients, we like to immerse ourselves in their research needs with briefings, often involving physical exposure to their product and service cycles, sometimes involving internal workshops and face-to-face interviewing of staff. Our approach to understanding any form of customer research is to spend time understanding the range of experiences that customers encounter. This requires direct exposure to the range of contact points a typical organization may have with its various customer groups, including both indirect and direct customers.
The implementation of our research electronically is one of the exciting ways in which clients can gain immeasurable advantage with immediacy of results. We enjoy sharing with clients the thrill of watching participating respondents building data literally by the minute as responses from all over the globe are automatically integrated into visually intuitive, practical management reporting tools.
Managers looking through typical research results typically face large quantities of single perspective, static data in voluminous print reports. We think research with utility means just that – we like to show people very clear screen visuals that readily suit their own internal presentations. The detail of our web-enabled reporting is vast, but the message is always clear. The views that are possible: whatever is preferred, whether it is using our Executive Summary view or viewing actual respondent commentary.
We find we tend to attract clients who enjoy digging into their results – in fact we end up encouraging them! Our greatest pleasure is in seeing our web-enabled reporting tools pushed as hard as possible. We like to see our clients diving into their own, secure, web-based reports and applying filters to look for variances in customer perceptions across groups, across regions, across satisfaction levels. We like to see report users look for the issues which are of highest priority; the issues that have the most impact on satisfaction; and with our Issues Summary, the issues where performance, impact and priority all combine in derived-importance relationships that are fully integrated with our reporting filters.
And of course we like it when clients ask the impossible – we like the fun of a challenge! Try us.